SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2008

This fall will see several art biennials in Asia coinciding. Organizers call it Art Compass 2008, and art lovers can visit Sydney, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei and Fukuoka.

Some of these cities are releasing their artist lists. The following is from the press release for the Singapore Biennale 2008. For more info http://www.singaporebiennale.org/
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SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2008
11 September – 16 November 2008
(Vernissage: 9 – 10 September 2008)
Wonder

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The Singapore Biennale 2008 (SB2008), Singapore’s premier international contemporary visual arts event, will open to the public from 11 September to 16 November 2008. Organised by the National Arts Council, the Biennale will feature a total of more than 50 artists and art collectives from over 36 countries and regions including Singapore. Following the critical success of SB2006, this second edition will continue to be the significant cultural event that brings visual arts into the daily lives of Singaporeans.
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THEME
SB2008, through its theme WONDER, proposes to investigate the articulation and creation of marvels, riddles and illusions in our world today. Its conceptual scope issues a challenge to the contemporary world, a world that no longer questions choices, nor allows for things and events to awe us. Through contemporary art, Wonder calls on us to question and be curious; to reach beyond the surface, surpassing the apparent and to allow ourselves be surprised, awed, tantalised and challenged. All of which is an aperture to the World.
"The artworks selected or to be newly developed with the artists, will attempt to cut through the fabric of the politically and socially constructed and perceptual limits, of our world," Artistic Director Fumio Nanjo remarks. "These call upon us to question and be curious, to punch through surfaces of what is apparent so that we can be surprised, tantalised and challenged at what is revealed or presented. Consequently, some of these works also engage our minds and our senses upon terrain that is unexplained, unfamiliar and, at times, seemingly consistent with trickery, or present things of unutterable beauty, that we are held at awe in their presence."
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ARTISTS, ARTIST COLLECTIVES AND ARTWORKS
This exhibition will showcase an illustrious list of established and emerging artists whose works engender wonder about the world we live in. The present artist list includes artists from Asia, Middle East, Europe and the Americas, such as Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Deborah Kelly, Isak Berbic, Hans op de Beeck, Anthony McCall, Isaac Montoya, Faisal Samra, Fujiko Nakaya, Ki-bong Rhee, and Felice Varini, to Southeast Asia and Singapore, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan,
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Heman Chong, Shubigi Rao, Tang Ling Nah and Willy Koh and Sherman Ong. All produce sharp, wonderful work that provide apertures and prisms of possibilities and hope, through which we can gaze at the world.